Tennyson’s Morte D’Arthur is a poem about the passing of an old order.
King Arthur is about to die. He realises that with his death all the romance of the Round Table goes with him.
It had been a time when institutions were respected. Women were graceful and beautiful. Men were brave and handsome. And everything was held together by a glue of mutual respect, duty and selflessness.
But Arthur realises that’s now all in the past. And he sends out his knight Sir Bedivere to throw his sword Excalibur into the lake to mark the end of his enchanted reign.
But Sir Bedivere thinks, I’m not going to throw away this symbol of all that’s good in the world. So he pretends he’s done it, and goes back to Arthur.
Arthur knows he hasn’t done it and berates him. So Sir Bedivere sets off again, but again convinces himself of the virtue of holding on to the priceless sword.
Arthur is furious when he returns. He accuses Sir Bedivere of treachery. He threatens to kill him if he doesn’t get rid of it.
Finally, Sir Bedivere throws the sword into the water and a mysterious hand catches it and takes it back into the deep.
Likewise, for us, the glue that has held our societies together for the past 75 years no long adheres. The mortar holding the bricks together has turned to dust. The old political order of the West is dead.
This means that we have to come up with new institutions, new organisations and new ways to manage our collective future.
It’s sad that Sir Bedivere, who was once a loyal and decent defender of the old ways, has suddenly turned into a liability; a symbol of corruption.
Nothing makes sense in our present state of political upheaval unless you ask why good people keep supporting organisations that no longer do what they used to do.
The Ancient Greeks had a way to train people to deal with this problem.
They encouraged young citizens to study rhetoric.
Rhetoric teaches us that living is about choices. And it’s the job of leaders to offer us choices using persuasive arguments, not historical conventions.
It’s actually really hard to come up with good arguments to justify bad policies and defunct organisations, but it’s quite easy to be Sir Bedivere and refuse to let go of the past.
King Arthur was a wise king.
He grasped that when the old order has died, we need to ‘go forth companionless…among new men, strange faces, other minds.’
The European Speechwriter Network brings together people who are curious about this forgotten intellectual system called rhetoric.
Why not join our Network in 2025?
You can then acquire the tools to begin the task of building a new Camelot.